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Abstract:
Complex and spatially varying warming impacts on rice yield hinder climate change impact assessments on food security. To address this issue, we compiled a global dataset of field-warming experiments (n = 214) and analyzed stage-specific crop responses to temperature variations. Results show that exposures to high (30° to 35°C) and extreme high (>35°C) temperatures are the dominant drivers of warming-induced rice yield losses, primarily through harvest index reductions. One additional exposure day above 30°C during the reproductive stage reduces rice yields by 1.1 to 1.8%. In contrast, current global gridded crop models underestimate this sensitivity, simulating only 0.1 to 1.3% yield loss per exposure day. After adjusting the model biases, we estimate that global rice yield losses decrease by 8.1% under 1°C of global warming, approximately twice the unadjusted estimates, with South and Southeast Asia being the most vulnerable regions. Our results highlight the critical role of high-temperature exposure in shaping warming impacts on rice yield.
